It all adds up to this disconnect between the drama and the player, a non-suspension of disbelief where the artifice overshadows the art. It doesn’t help that those monologues are delivered from the safe certainty of a future we know Giulia winds up in, leeching any remaining sense of urgency. Every significant event in Martha Is Dead is accompanied by a long, long monologue where Giulia recounts how she felt sad or shocked or excited. Showing not telling is a particularly heinous sin when it comes to psychological horror, because it’s hard to care what happens to a character that already seems lifeless. The most uncomfortable part was worrying that someone might walk into my room and ask me to explain myself.Īt least they wouldn’t be exposed to the writing.
There’s this backwards assumption that the longer we get to stare at corpse gore the more disturbing it will become, rather than the exact opposite. The plot lurches from one macabre catastrophe to the next, alternating between ostensibly real events and nasty dream sequences where the camera gets to really linger over the latest messed-up body. Deadpan narration bluntly explains that your mother has always loathed you while adoring your deaf and now-dead sister, Martha, so you go along with it. She’s wearing one of your dresses, so when your parents come rushing to the lake shore and find you cradling her bloated corpse, they assume that you are she. After a brief flashback where your nanny reads you a gruesome story about a jealous lover who kills a woman who turns into a murder-ghost, Martha Is Dead opens with you venturing down to the lovely lake nestled in the charming woods behind your pleasantly rustic house - where your sister has not so charmingly just drowned. You’re Giulia, the daughter of a fascist general, though that’s just backdrop. We’re in rural Italy, 1944, towards the end of WW2. For the most part Martha just made me frown and go “ew”. Horror games are allowed to be horrific, but the way to cultivate real fear is through restraint rather than desensitising bombardment. It’s just a dream, but still, this is far from the only time Martha Is Dead insists you do something unspeakable, nor is it even the only time you’re forced to desecrate your sister’s corpse.Īpart from poor writing, these excessive, brute force attempts to disturb define Martha Is Dead. After lingering over the resulting mess of blood, muscle and bulging eyes, you then place your recently drowned identical twin sister’s face over your own.
You do it slowly, with a blunt dog tag, making several raggedy incisions before tearing off the face proper. This is the game where you peel a dead woman’s face off.
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